School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Edward's College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 210 families who named St Edward's College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 159 and 357 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Liverpool actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

2.25

first choices for every place available

357 first preferences for 159 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Edward's College

There is no published appeal success rate for St Edward's College, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Liverpool as a whole and cover every state-funded school in the authority. Anyone quoting you odds for a named school is making them up.

Across Liverpool, 8.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 185 of 2,150 appeals heard in 2024–2026. The England figure is 20.1%.

A panel is not deciding whether you want the school. It decides whether the admission arrangements were lawful and correctly applied, and then whether the harm to your child of not being admitted outweighs the harm to the school of going over its published number. Cases built on preference rather than on those two questions are the ones that fail.

See the full appeal figures for Liverpool.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Liverpool ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.

How contested this school has been

St Edward's College turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at St Edward's College, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.8 1.5 2.3 3.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 2.37 per place 344 first choices 145 places 2016/17 2.93 per place 434 first choices 148 places 2017/18 2.51 per place 372 first choices 148 places 2018/19 2.39 per place 375 first choices 157 places 2019/20 2.28 per place 386 first choices 169 places 2020/21 2.36 per place 401 first choices 170 places 2021/22 2.66 per place 445 first choices 167 places 2022/23 2.5 per place 420 first choices 168 places 2023/24 2.34 per place 395 first choices 169 places 2024/25 1.68 per place 304 first choices 181 places 2025/26 1.74 per place 290 first choices 167 places 2026/27 2.25 per place 357 first choices 159 places
First preferences per place at St Edward's College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 357 first preferences for 159 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Edward's College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 145 344 132 2.37
2016/17 148 434 143 2.93
2017/18 148 372 133 2.51
2018/19 157 375 143 2.39
2019/20 169 386 144 2.28
2020/21 170 401 150 2.36
2021/22 167 445 147 2.66
2022/23 168 420 160 2.5
2023/24 169 395 150 2.34
2024/25 181 304 170 1.68
2025/26 167 290 149 1.74
2026/27 159 357 147 2.25

Places offered

159

in 2026/27

Named first choice

357

1,119 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

41.2%

147 of 357

Offers to families outside the council

28%

45 of 159 offers

Was the school full?

This is the question a panel spends most of its time on. At the second stage of an appeal it weighs the harm to the school of taking an extra child against the harm to your child of being refused — and how much room the school has is the heart of that. The admission authority has to show harm over and above the fact that its published number has been reached, so it is fair to ask what the specific harm is — how the second stage actually works.

Places, Years 7 to 11

845

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

896

106% of capacity

Over its capacity by

51

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

excluded from the figures above

Read this before you use these numbers

These are whole-school figures across Years 7 to 11, not the year group you are appealing for. A school can hold spare places in its upper years while the year you want is genuinely full, and the panel will have the year-group numbers in front of it. So this does not show that St Edward's College has room for your child.

They are also the school's own reported capacity, as at 1 May 2025 — a year behind the application figures further up this page, and a description rather than a finding.

On the published figures St Edward's College was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Edward's College from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,023 places 1,188 on roll 2011/12 1,030 places 1,170 on roll 2012/13 1,030 places 1,157 on roll 2013/14 1,030 places 1,117 on roll 2014/15 1,030 places 1,097 on roll 2015/16 1,030 places 1,074 on roll 2016/17 1,030 places 1,056 on roll 2017/18 1,030 places 1,075 on roll 2018/19 1,071 places 1,087 on roll 2020/21 1,071 places 1,122 on roll 2021/22 1,071 places 1,141 on roll 2022/23 1,145 places 1,176 on roll 2023/24 1,180 places 1,174 on roll 2024/25 1,145 places 1,154 on roll
Whole-school figures including any sixth form, as at 1 May each year. 2019/20 is missing because the 2020 School Capacity survey was cancelled.

Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. St Edward's College has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Edward's College. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
3 August 2018 Arrangements did not comply ADA3485

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Liverpool

Postcode L12 1LF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136735).

Other contested secondary schools in Liverpool

Applications and offers: Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27. Appeal figures: Admission appeals in England. Both under the Open Government Licence.